


On the Ropes

by Eremji (handsfullofdust)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Porn, Anti-Fascism, Anti-Nazism, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Blow Jobs, Boxing, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Religious Characters, Size Kink, Use of Homophobic Language by an Antagonist, illegal gambling, recreational alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 19:47:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15517281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handsfullofdust/pseuds/Eremji
Summary: Bucky's on the take. If the upcoming illegal boxing match or the looming world war don't do him in, Steve just might.He thinks of the money promised and how he wants to give Steve the whole damn world: all he’s got are his own two hands, and if they have to be bent to hurting other people to get what he needs, then so be it.





	On the Ropes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eidheann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eidheann/gifts).



> A very special thanks to [eidheann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eidheann), who sight unseen dove into the hot mess of my unfinished draft and smashed her keyboard until I wrote the last word.
> 
> I disable anonymous commenting, but if you don't have an Ao3 account and would like to get in touch with me, I can also be reached on [Tumblr](https://eremji.tumblr.com/) and [Pillowfort](https://pillowfort.io/Eremji) (if you have closed beta access).
> 
> As always, don't forget to check the warnings. I try to tag thoughtfully, but if you come across anything major you think I should have warned for, please let me know!

‘ _A single blow can unveil the watermark of your soul in a way nothing else ever can_.’  
– Brin-Jonathan Butler  


*

  
A pair of kids kick a red ball down the street, and Bucky must tune out watching them because he doesn't see Frankie Jackson and Danny Walsh until they're right up under the greengrocer’s awning with him. Bucky's on his break, pitched up under the last scrap of midday shade with his overshirt stripped off, so he doesn't have time to pretend he’s busy and escape into the store.  
  
Frankie and Danny crowd right up in his space, and Frankie lights up one of those cheap cigarettes that smells like tar and not tobacco. He drops his lit match at Bucky’s feet and Bucky grinds it out with the heel of his boot.  
  
“You can't smoke here. Old Man Halloran has asthma,” Bucky says evenly.  
  
“Old Man Halloran can take a fucking walk,” Danny says. He's a big fella, a proper bruiser with all the brains of a man who’s taken a few too many punches and an ugly temper to match. The big players in the local Irish mob like to use him as muscle – and occasionally as a button man – because he’s Italian on his mother’s side, and there's nothing more reliable than a dim-witted thug with a powerful need to prove he belongs.  
  
“How’s about you let me do the talking, Danny,” Frankie says, and flicks his ash at Danny. “Your smart mouth is gonna get that old geezer on the line with the police, and we’re just here to have a little chat.”  
  
“I don’t have time to talk,” Bucky says, kicking his chair back on two legs like he don’t care two mobsters are paying him a visit at his place of employment in broad daylight. “In case you fellas didn’t notice, I’m gainfully employed, and therefore my time’s not my own.”  
  
“See, the thing about talking is it don’t take long,” Frankie says, muscling past Danny, who looks fit to fight – but, Bucky acknowledges, that might just be Danny’s face. Frankie is a big man, not as big as Danny, but still, a big man, and without a drop of Irish in him. He’s some mix of nameless immigrant parents, broad-shouldered and ruddy-faced, and it makes him dangerous; he does kneecapping for the mob because he likes it, not out of some misplaced sense of family like Danny.  
  
He’s also the only kind of guy a big musclehead like Danny will shut up and listen to, kind of like how a dog’ll still heel to the fella that kicks it.  
  
Bucky looks them both up and down, making a show of shaking out his uniform shirt while feigning casual disinterest in their presence. “What can I do you fellas for?”  
  
“We got a fight for you,” Danny says, shifting his bulk to look around Frankie.  
  
“You keep quiet,” Frankie scolds, then to Bucky, “There's a fight next Friday, at the Mad Rooster. Big prize pot, couple of high rollers going to be there and the boss wants to land a few whales before they leave town.”  
  
Bucky’s still not sure when his reputation for taking rough jobs started. He works down on the docks sometimes when he needs extra cash for Steve’s medical bills. It’s backbreaking labor, but sometimes he gets paid a little extra to look the other way. He’s not the only one. Sometimes he carries packages down to one of the handful of mob speakeasies, but he doesn’t know a lad in the neighborhood – except for maybe Steve – who hasn’t run a few odd jobs for criminal types.  
  
Maybe the mob saw him with Steve one day and thought that Bucky was the kind of man who could be strong-armed with the welfare of his best pal. The Irish mob have been run out of most of the city by the Italian crime families, scraping by off bootlegging and smuggling, and Bucky supposes one desperate, hungry soul recognizes another.  
  
Still, this isn't Bucky's usual kind of racket, so Bucky grinds his teeth around a powerful urge to tell Frankie and Danny and the whole lot of them to go fuck themselves. “What’s the fight?”  
  
“Ernie MacDougal,” Frankie says. “Heard of him?”  
  
“Yeah. He was in our church before his ma packed him off to Sheepshead. Fella tries to fight like Sixto,” Bucky says, thumbing his nose. MacDougal ain’t half bad, but he also ain’t a professional prizefighter. “You want me up against a little guy like him? I’d knock him around if I could get a hand on him but could be he’s too fast for a big guy like me. Might not be a good fight.”  
  
Bucky and Steve went to see Sixto Escobar’s fight reel the year he won his world championship and Steve had come out of the cinema throwing jabs at the air and laughing that a little guy just like him could take down a bunch of powerful fellas. After that, Bucky’d taken Steve all the way up to the Harlem YMCA on west 185th street; at eighteen, Bucky’d earned some goodwill from the black boys that patronized the club when he made his rounds on the local boxing circuit, so he had use of the facilities for the fee of a few cigarettes and a dirty joke.  
  
“Fuck Sixto Escobar. Our Ernie would go all the way if there was any money in professional boxing,” Danny says proudly, puffed up like a pigeon and twice as dumb.  
  
“What did I tell you about speaking, Danny?” Frankie asks, low and dangerous. “One more word outta you, and I’ll bust your flapping lips myself.”  
  
Danny, mercifully, seems to believe Frankie’s bluster and settles for rocking back and forth on the big ham hocks he calls feet.  
  
Bucky shoulders into his uniform shirt and hikes his suspenders up over them, because Old Man Halloran will come looking for him in a few minutes, Irish mob or no, and he ain’t about to compromise his cushy job slinging boxes out of the summer sun for two meatheads like Frankie and Danny. Still, he thinks about his tin of rolled cash under his bed, and the little collection Steve’s making at home, taped up on their rheumatic icebox, all his clippings from the Times collecting there like driftwood. There's a copy of the article from the Treaty of Versailles, yellowing and faded around the edges, riots in Berlin, and most recently the crisp and terrifying leaflet that simply reads: HITLER’S WAY AND OURS.  
  
Scuffing his shoe against a cracked paver, he asks, “What's the catch?” and tries to work his way around the two meatheads so he can get back to work.  
  
“What makes you think there's a catch?” Frankie puts the bulk of himself in Bucky’s path. There’s a whole lot of it, more by half than what Bucky’s got, so he stops short because he’s not looking to get decked, no matter how mad he is.  
  
“You fellas always got hidden terms. Ain't a straight deal to be had with you lot,” Bucky says. A couple of ladies from up the street sidle past, mouths twisted in disdain, and Bucky just knows he's gonna get an earful as soon as Frankie and Danny clear off. It's always calamity in the neighborhood when the toughs come around, and like as not Steve’ll get word about this little visit before Bucky can even get home.  
  
“Fella might get his feelings hurt, listening to talk like that,” Frankie says.  
  
“Fella might, but I ain't never known you to have something as plebeian as a genuine emotion,” Bucky says. Danny steps closer, intent on intimidation, but Frankie stops him with a hand on Danny’s chest, Frankie’s grin big and wide, like a hyena’s.  
  
“Ten days from now at the Mad Rooster, seven o’clock. The boss’ll pay you to go down when he tells you to go down,” Frankie says. He flips a crisp fiver at Bucky, who isn’t so well off he isn’t going to pocket a day’s pay. “There’s plenty more where that comes from for a guy who can take a punch and keep his big mouth shut.”  
  
“And if a fella can’t?” Bucky challenges, because as much as scrapping in alleys is really Steve’s thing, bullies don’t impress Bucky very much either.  
  
The way Frankie's smile widens makes him look downright mean. “Well, we know where to find you, don't we?”  
  
Bucky pushes past Frankie. “I’ll think about it.”  
  
“Don’t think about it too long, Barnes,” Frankie says. “Too much thinking gets fellas like you in trouble.”  
  
“Fellas like me get into trouble whether they think it through or not,” Bucky says, but they’re already clearing off.  


*

  
Steve’s home when Bucky gets there, which sets off a sort of fear, deep in Bucky’s bones, like a bell’s been rung inside his skull, because the only reason Steve ever misses Wednesday evening Mass is if he’s sick.  
  
Bucky doesn’t bother unlacing his boots before he kicks them off by the door. The two narrow windows are open, and a dull cross-breeze barely stirs the curtains, making no inroads towards lifting the stifling clutch of summer heat. For a moment, Bucky thinks he’ll get all the way back to Steve’s room and find Frankie and Danny sitting with Steve between them, that they’d sink low enough to use Steve as leverage to convince Bucky to take the fight.  
  
Bucky draws up short of Steve’s open bedroom door, and the iron fist of fear that squeezes his heart slowly releases when he sees Steve stripped down to his undershirt, a pencil between his teeth and another in his hand.  
  
Steve’s smudged and sweaty, but there’s a woman taking shape under his hand, in broad, shadowy strokes on a real, honest-to-God canvas. There are nothing but dark lines and the suggestion of a curvaceous form, but even from the doorway Bucky can tell it’s gonna be the kind of art you don’t share with polite company.  
  
“Steve?” he asks gently, because he doesn’t want to startle Steve, “Thought you’d be at Mass, pal.”  
  
Steve turns, and his excitement is immediately palpable, his face smudged with charcoal. “I got a commission. Come look.”  
  
Probably the only things Steve Rogers might love more than scrapping in the name of justice are his mama, rest her soul, and art. Bucky good-naturedly jostles Steve aside to get a better look, and closer up he can see that he was on the mark about the subject matter; Steve’s sketched out the enticing outline of a nipple peeking out from the unbuttoned line of a jacket.  
  
It’s a little more art deco than his normal stuff, but there’s a fluidity and realism the high-color prints that ladies’ fashion advertisements lack. Even Bucky, an old hand at the little eight pagers the boys at the docks pass around, filled with priapic brutes and swooning, big-busted women, finds the curve of her cupid’s bow and the hooded slant of her eyes tantalizingly rendered. There’s some of Steve’s romantic streak in it, that yearning that Bucky sometimes catches when he thinks Bucky don’t notice Steve’s hangdog frown when they’re out dancing.  
  
“You been sneaking peeks at the neighborhood girls for inspiration?” Bucky jabs, slinging an arm around Steve's shoulder. “Ain’t no gals in Brooklyn look like this.”  
  
“We spoke at a club.” Steve says evasively, “I wanted to finish her up while it was still fresh.  
  
Bucky's eyebrows climb, because _clubs_ , especially the kind where Steve might get a glimpse of a nipple, are not places he’d normally think to look for Steve. “Stevie, what’d you get yourself into while I was at work today?”  
  
And that’s part of the problem – Steve don’t have a single steady job, much less a few, like Bucky, so that leaves him plenty of time to get his fool head into trouble when Bucky ain’t around to watch. They go round and round about Steve working, like cats and dogs, and sometimes Bucky feels like he’s just one bad argument – one case of Steve coming home with a bloody nose and someone’s honor defended – away from dragging Steve all the way down to Texas and sitting him on the middle of nowhere on a cattle ranch, where the only thing he can do is mind his own business.  
  
Steve pulls away from him, scowling and rubbing the back of his neck. “I told you, I got a commission.”  
  
“What kind of person commissions this kind of stuff?” Bucky gestures to the sketch, more outraged at the fact Steve would slink off to some seedy speakeasy without him than the subject of his art. Bucky ain’t a stranger to the female form, but apparently neither is Steve’s imagination.  
  
“There’s a woman in Greenwich Village who wanted a series of body studies,” Steve says, pinking up, and Bucky instantly knows he's gone off hunting for trouble. “She runs a private gallery. She’s willing to pay well, Buck, and it’s good, easy money.”  
  
“Steve, tell me you didn't go to one of those shady bars,” Bucky asks, swiping a hand over his face tiredly.  
  
“Don't say things like that. Those guys and gals ain’t bad sorts, no matter what the Bible says,” Steve says, bleeding heart that he is. Bucky’s never quite been able to pin down whether or not Steve’s that way inclined, or if it's just more of his ferocious solidarity with the outcasts and the downtrodden of the world. For all Steve is Catholic right down to his bones, Bucky suspects Steve would fight God Himself if Steve thought the cause was just.  
  
“Like what, Stevie? You know I ain't got any problems with queer folk and all, but you're borrowing trouble,” Bucky says. “Little guy like you gets seen with the wrong people, you know what they’ll say.”  
  
“Buck, jeez,” Steve says, shoving at him a little. He backs off a step, but Steve keeps one hand fisted in the front of Bucky’s shirt, not letting him get too far without a bit of scolding. “It's not like that.”  
  
“Don't matter what it's like, Stevie. I don’t doubt the police of the fine city of New York will ask many questions when they bust up your little artist rally and cart you off for sodomy,” Bucky says.  
  
He sees immediately that he’s gone too far, that it might sound like an accusation, but Steve goes as red as a cherry and slams down his charcoals before Bucky can walk it back. Steve snaps, “James Barnes, I thought you had a little more respect for me than to say things like that.”  
  
Bucky grabs Steve's elbow before he hares off and makes the whole thing worse than it needs to be, because the day is already difficult enough without Steve being pissed at him, too. He says, “Hey, _don’t_ , I’m sorry. I’m just worried about you going down there alone with all those toughs. It ain’t like fighting the neighborhood bullies, Stevie.”  
  
The look Steve gives him is scathing, but Bucky stands his ground. Steve unbends, because Steve has a hot head with a hair trigger, but he isn’t immune to reason, especially when Bucky squares up against Steve's bullheadedness. “You've got a lot of nerve, James Buchanan Barnes, considering some of the company _you_ keep.”  
  
“I know you don't like me saying you can't look after yourself,” Bucky says, apologetic because Steve isn’t wrong. He steers Steve bodily back towards the canvas. “Come on, look – your pretty dame’s waiting for you.”  
  
Steve pushes his hair out of his eyes, and Bucky clamps down on the urge to reach up and wipe away the absent-minded smudges of charcoal streaking Steve’s narrow jaw. Having none of it, Steve shrugs out of Bucky’s grip and turns back to his art, but Bucky can see the tension slowly uncoiling. They never could stay mad at each other very long, and Steve isn't the only one guilty of a little misdirected wrath now and then.  
  
“It's not really as dangerous as you think,” Steve says, and bends to put his fat charcoal pencil back to sketching out the delicate curve of a breast, shading in the crook of her arm. “They’re discreet. They’ve got protection.”  
  
“ _Mafia_ protection –”  
  
Steve cuts him off, “Buck, you’ve done work for the Irish mob. That’s hardly any better.”  
  
Bucky closes his hands into fists, trying not to think of Steve, who prays and goes to Mass and has a rosary by his bed, getting himself mixed up with the kind of folks that frequent those kinds of establishments, the kind of folks that like to slide in beside the disadvantaged and skim the cream off the crock.  
  
He tries not to think of Steve peering up at a disrobing woman, tries not to wonder if Steve liked what he saw or just admired her critically with his artist’s eye, her body just a collection of parabolic curves to be reproduced faithfully under Steve’s hand.  
  
“Tell me about this client?” Bucky asks, full of nervous sort of energy, a roll of thunderclap anxiety from stem to stern. The boxing match has him rattled, and there will be a fight for sure if he tells Steve about it. He moves in on Steve, slow, not sure if Steve’s in the mood for an audience.  
  
With careful, precise movements, Steve fills in the details: the dip of her throat, the coy sweep of her lashes, the way her unbuttoned blouse hides nothing, but drapes across her bosom as if to imply modesty. When Steve’s long fingers sweep across the curve of her breast and make to sketch out an areola with the tip of his pencil, Bucky’s mouth goes dry, his throat constricting.  
  
“Well, you’re looking at her,” Steve says, and looks up from beneath his lashes at Bucky. “She's some kind of something.”  
  
It's like Bucky’s been struck by a bolt of lightning. He watches Steve's fingers buff out a bit of shadow beneath the curve of his benefactor’s waist, leaden tongued and shamefully stunned. Bucky always sets Steve up with a date when they go to the cinema, or dancing, or for cheap drinks at local dives, and Steve has no problem politely muscling his way through the night with any dame, no matter how disinterested – but to think of this woman, her hair spilling over her shoulders, unbuttoning for Steve in some dark room –  
  
“You sure did get well-acquainted with her,” Bucky manages. He’s suddenly struggling not to think of Steve’s fingers cupping the pink mound of a breast. The summer heat must be getting to him, because when Steve smiles, warmth swells below Bucky’s ribs, flooding all the way down to his belly.  
  
“I'd offer to introduce you,” Steve says, “but you’re not really her type.”  
  
“Too tall?” Bucky tries, looking Steve over meaningfully.  
  
At that, Steve laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling, a hand on his chest, and then says, “She’s only after dames, Buck. Sorry to disappoint you. You'll have to take another gal dancing.”  
  
Just for the art then. But Bucky wonders what Steve saw in the slant of her shoulders that he was able to reproduce her so well, right down to her eyelashes.  
  
“Too bad, pal,” Bucky says, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “She's a real beauty.”  
  
“She studied fine arts at Hunter College,” Steve says, puffing up a little. Bucky sometimes forgets how cerebral Steve can get, how oblivious he seems to be to everything about a person except their grey matter and the contents thereof. “She's opening a gallery right on Bleeker, a couple blocks up from the park, and it's going to be filled with nothing but queer art.”  
  
Half a dozen questions spring to the front of Bucky's brain, but he can't think of a polite way to ask any of them and if his best pal is revealing some confidence, Bucky isn't about to miss it just because he’s on unsteady footing. He gains some ground on the matter, and asks, “And she wanted your art?”  
  
Steve’s pencil slows, then stops, and he lets his hand drop, angling his head towards Bucky. His expression is shrewd, almost predatory, and definitely challenging. Steve’s a hard man – hard to stand up to, hard not to love – and a righteous one. Bucky doesn’t know how to handle all his sharp edges any more, honed by Sarah Rogers’ death, all the softness gone out of Steve and nothing left but the unshakeable force of his own will.  
  
“That a problem?”  
  
Bucky only narrowly prevents himself from taking a step back. He raises his hands in defense. “You don’t like dames, that’s your business.”  
  
“I never said I didn’t like dames,” Steve says, then, “Might just be that I think some people are a little more complicated than that, is all.”  
  
“Well,” Bucky says, and shoves his hands in his pockets, not sure what to do with that kind of information. Bucky always reckoned people went one way or the other, but the way Steve puts it, there’s a whole host of other things a fella could get into. “That’s not my business either.”  
  
“You should come with me some time,” Steve says. He casts a careless look over his shoulder, and the brief flicker of his smile passes across his expression like heat lightning. It occurs to Bucky, rather abruptly, that it’s been a rare sight since Sarah Rogers was gone and buried. There's something mercurial about it, and Bucky wonders what else he's missed while he's been working himself in circles trying to catch a break for both of them.  
  
“Maybe I will,” Bucky says, belatedly, but Steve is already engrossed in his art again.  


*

  
Bucky makes good on his word when they hop the train to the Village a few nights later. Steve stands the whole way, his covered canvas tucked beneath one skinny elbow with great care.  
  
The proprietress is a short, dark-skinned woman who gives her name as Lois Rodriguez, but asks Bucky and Steve to call her Queenie in the confines of the bar. She’s so warm-mannered that Bucky can’t manage to feel a bit of shame that Steve is toting around a naked portrait of her. Queenie holds the canvas aloft with open delight, praising Steve for his detail work in a whole host of terms that Bucky is only vaguely familiar with.  
  
“If you could step into the back with my assistant,” Queenie says to Steve, “he’ll handle your payment. You’re free to stay, of course.” Then, to the bartender, “Eduardo, get these gentlemen some drinks.”  
  
Not invited to come back to do business with Steve, Bucky settles on an empty stool in front of the bar. It’s still early enough in the evening that the bar isn’t packed, the live entertainment still setting up on the small stage with a uniformed crew in attendance.  
  
“You make a handsome couple,” Queenie says, putting a friendly hand on Bucky’s elbow. Her dark, sweeping lashes are familiar to Bucky, and he has trouble meeting her eyes after seeing Steve pick out the crease of her hip.  
  
Bucky thinks it’d be insulting to protest about Steve here and now, considering the bar’s patronage. He's always wondered himself, with no small amount of frustration, what made the gals they took on dates pass Steve over. This ain't the rest of the world, where a leering passerby might get him and Steve arrested if Bucky lets certain assumptions stand, so he holds his tongue and smiles.  
  
It ain't like Bucky can't see what he and Steve must look like to someone on the outside. It ain’t like it didn’t occur to him to think about it, more than occasionally, when the jeers from the guys down at the docks or the boxing club grew frequent, and all the dates with all the dames in the world couldn’t change the fact that Bucky Barnes would follow Steve Rogers right into the mouth of Hell.  
  
He lifts his whisky. “A toast to Steve Rogers, the best man I know.” The liquor burns on the way down.  
  
Queenie gives him a sideways smile. “Enjoy your stay, Mr. Barnes.” She vanishes into the back of the bar, likely to handle some affair in the narrow galley kitchen, where, on the way in, Bucky spied a pair of men of indeterminate Eastern European origin churning out fresh juice and fruit wedges to garnish overpriced drinks.  
  
The transaction takes about half an hour, and in that time men and women – and a curious assortment of ambiguously-clad individuals in eye-catching colors – flood the bar, laughing and chatting. Bucky gets a few curious looks, out of place in his wash-worn shirt and threadbare pants, but mostly the patrons seem to be uninterested in his brooding.  
  
In the interim, Bucky throws back a few drinks much too fast, then retreats to a corner table with a view of the dance floor. His first few cups are mostly watered-down whisky, but they’re potent enough on an empty stomach that he feels warm all over and a little dizzy with the noise and heat. It isn’t so different from his normal dance hall scene, except that some of the people in dresses look a little different than he’s used to, and there are scores of women looped around each other, which he can hardly be mad at.  
  
Bucky’s dragging a hand back through his hair when slim fingers close over his shoulder. “All right?” Steve asks, over a burst of laughter from a group pushing through the open door.  
  
“Just fine,” Bucky says. Truth be told, he’s fairly uneasy, even with the liquor loosening the clutch of tension he’s felt since Steve extended the invitation. He doesn’t think anyone they know from Brooklyn would hike all the way out to Greenwich Village to this specific bar – but he and Steve are here, after all. He scans the growing crowd, pensive.  
  
Steve steps in close to be heard, one hand on Bucky’s shoulder and the cool line of his beer bottle pushed up against Bucky’s waist with the other, and Bucky’s had enough to drink that he tips his face up, foolish with warmth and the lack of scrutiny. Steve asks, so close his warm, hoppy breath stirs Bucky’s hair, “You want to go dance?”  
  
“Sure thing,” Bucky says, and closes his hand around Steve’s thin wrist. Bucky drapes Steve’s arm over his shoulder, and hooks his own arm around Steve's waist, and it's easier than he thought to crowd Steve between his spread knees, like he might a flirtatious date. “Can I have this dance?”  
  
He can see Steve’s brows go up and Steve laughs; Bucky realizes he’s misunderstood Steve’s offer. “I can’t dance, Buck.”  
  
“Well, I ain’t quite up for dancing with any of these other fellas,” Bucky says, and then pitches his voice low, conspiratorially, making a lark of it, “and if I dance with the dames, our cover’s blown.”  
  
Steve is soft-mouthed, smiling. “We’re not on an undercover operation, Buck.” He turns to survey the dance floor, which is slowly filling with people, worming halfway out of Bucky’s grasp, but not retreating so far that Bucky can't feel the heat of Steve's body. “No one's going to care who you dance with.”  
  
Thing is, Bucky doesn't really want to dance with anyone else, but he can't quite bring himself to say so. For as long as he can remember he and Steve have been unimpeachably solid, but he thinks maybe that’s the kind of talk that shakes even good foundations.  
  
Maybe it's the summer heat and the booze addling his brain, but he tugs insistently on Steve's sleeve, bringing him back around, pushing the joke into serious territory.  
  
He’s danced with Steve before, once, before Steve’s ma passed, his big hands closed around Steve’s surprisingly calloused palms, with Sarah Rogers manning the radio. Mrs. Rogers had leaned on her elbows, blowing her cigarette smoke out the window, and watched them with the kind of warm expression mothers get when their kids are happy.  
  
Bucky would do a lot to recapture that bright spot of nostalgia, and the memory heavy hangs over him, suspended in time, Steve’s ma clutching her sides with laughter while Bucky tried to teach Steve to swing dance.  
  
Steve is looking down at him, bemused. “What?”  
  
“You sure I can't convince you to dance with me?” Bucky asks, laying it on extra thick. “You’re the prettiest thing in this whole damn bar, after all.”  
  
Steve’s eyebrows make headway towards his hairline, and he goes apple red. “ _Buck,_ quit using lines on me. Just because you came with me doesn't mean you gotta take pity on me.”  
  
It knocks the wind right out of Bucky's sails, and he lets go of Steve. Sourly, he says, “If you don't wanna, you could just say.”  
  
“I think maybe I'm going to go get another drink,” Steve says slowly, studying Bucky.  
  
Bucky feels like he could just about shrivel up with embarrassment and disappear. While he watches Steve's receding back, he tries to get his head screwed back on the right way.  
  
The music swings up in full force over the hum of conversation, a jazzy live band that plays a mix familiar tunes and improvisational noise. There's no singer and the bassist is occasionally out of tune, but that doesn't stop couples from spilling onto the dance floor in droves. The heat is remarkable, and Bucky loosens his collar, sweating beneath his shirt; he has to undo his tie to manage it, and shoves it in his trouser pocket.  
  
Steve is stopped on his way back from the bar by a tall, slim man, who touches Steve's forearm. Shaking his head, Steve steps to the side, but the man blocks his progress, and repeats what he says. Bucky was never any good at lip reading, but he can discern from the stranger’s body language and Steve’s expression some kind of pass is being made.  
  
The man leans in and whispers something to Steve, mouth close enough that it brushes the delicate shell of Steve’s ear. Steve ducks his head and laughs, smiles up at the stranger, and a painful, unwarranted kind of anger grips Bucky's guts. It persists, even after Steve slips out of the man’s space and makes a beeline towards Bucky.  
  
Steve's face falls when he sees Bucky, his expression crumpling with clear disappointment.  
  
“Do you want to go?” Steve asks. “I didn't think you’d mind –”  
  
“Jesus, Stevie, no,” Bucky says, swallowing the knot in his throat. “It ain't that at all. I'm just being a heel.”  
  
Steve slides in beside Bucky at the small table, and suddenly they’re pressed together from hip to shoulder by necessity. “I was thinking you weren’t your usual charming self lately. What’s gotten into you?”  
  
“It’s been a long week,” Bucky says, and that ain’t a lie. “I got a lot on my mind is all.”  
  
Steve leans in to advise, “You shouldn't work so much,” and his breath stirs Bucky’s hair.  
  
Bucky leans into Steve, who is slim but solid, and also the least strange thing about the whole situation. The tension begins to unwind from his bones, so Bucky slings an amicable arm around Steve’s waist. He's petite enough that Bucky could probably wrap him up on one arm if Steve would stay still enough to let him.  
  
“Why don't you let me worry about how much I work,” Bucky says, taking a long pull from the fresh beer Steve brought him. It feels deliciously cool, a potent balm to the mugginess of the bar.  
  
“You’re gonna end up like one of those fellas that works at the big factories,” Steve says, listing gently into Bucky. “You’re gonna go to work twenty years, six days a week, sixteen hours a day, and then just drop dead the day before you’re set to collect a pension.”  
  
“Fellas like us don’t get a pension,” Bucky says, jostling Steve, and _God_ could he use a cigarette. Anything to keep his hands busy. “Besides, I only work _fourteen_ hours a day.”  
  
“I ain't joking, Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky already knew that, but he’d rather not dwell on the inevitability of his situation on a night out with his best pal.  
  
The band winds down to something slower, and the parquet floor clears off some, the locals sweating and clamoring for the bartender's attention.  
  
“Come dance with me?” Bucky asks again. “I know you think I’m messing around, but ain't nobody gonna bother us. Not here.”  
  
Steve frowns like he's trying to figure out if Bucky’s yanking his chain. “Fine. But no gassing about me stepping on your toes.”  
  
“Cross my heart,” Bucky says, and wipes his palms on his trousers before offering Steve his hand. He's nervous, but he figures he's got every right to be, considering the circumstances.  
  
“You should lead,” Steve says, keeping tight to Bucky’s side. Bucky puts a protective arm around Steve and swears that’s all there is. The heat is a palpable thing and even Steve, who always has trouble keeping himself warm, is sticky and wonderfully warm at his side.  
  
On their way to the dance floor, they negotiate their way around imposing gentlemen in a dress, who’s hanging on the arm of a tall woman in a suit. Steve cranes his neck and asks, half laughing, “Do you think I could pull off a dress like that?”  
  
He tries to imagine Steve in one of those slinky pinstripe dresses, all done up neat like one of catalog ladies he sketches, or even wobbling, foal-like, in sky high heels with rouged lips like the gals outside Times Square. The image doesn't come to him, no matter how hard he tries; instead, he thinks of Steve’s long fingers, calloused from his charcoals and pencils, and the elegant knob of bone at the nape of Steve’s neck, and the way he glows a bit when he's in his cups like this.  
  
Bucky says, “You sure could, but I like you the way you are,” and is pleased as could be to watch Steve pink right up from his scalp to the collar of his shirt. Grinning, Bucky spins him in a little circle, and takes a moment to enjoy how Steve presses up against him, laughing.  
  
The dance floor is filling again, patrons slowly filtering back as they finish their drinks, and Steve is already shoved up against him in the press of bodies. Bucky’s filled with a sort of languid, summery heat, between the booze and the catching, upbeat joy of the atmosphere. There's a giddiness that ripples through the crowd, and Bucky reckons it's because the people here can't really feel free anywhere else. Here, at least, they can pretend that the cops won't bust the joint open and haul them off to jail, that the barristers and accountants in dead marriages with church mouse wives won't have their names plastered across the front page of the paper if they get caught feeling up a slim young barback or randy sailor coming off a long tour.  
  
Bucky can pretend, too. He doesn't know that he's anything like the rest of them, but Steve is looking up at him, eyes crinkled at the corners from smiling, and Bucky knows he'd do a hell of a lot to keep that smile on Steve’s face.  
  
Here, even the threat of war in Europe is just a dim clamor in the back of Bucky’s mind, because God knows every day he worries that they’ll do a draft and he’ll get picked up and packed off – or even worse, there won’t be a draft and he’ll have to sign up. It’s the thing Steve would try to do, because Steve’s always looking for the good fight, and they’re so wrapped up in each other that Bucky can’t do anything except try to be a bigger hero than he is.  
  
Laughing, Bucky pushes Steve into a slow, awkward foxtrot, sketching out the steps more than following them, the two of them listing together in the middle of all the noise and clamor. It feels good to sweat, to hold Steve against him and forget for a while.  
  
Steve leans in, cheek to cheek with Bucky, and says, “Thank you for coming with me.” His breath sends a shiver coursing through Bucky’s body, and Bucky turns his face away, hiding it with a smile.  
  
Steve, who's in high spirits, even works out how to jitterbug a little when the band plays a bit of swing. When Steve breaks away to get another drink, Bucky, despite his earlier protests, gamely takes a turn dancing with a tall Frenchman in a dapper tie. Sweating and more than a little hot under the collar from all the physical exertion, he leaves Steve to take a piss and collect himself.  
  
The bathroom door is unlocked, but when Bucky pushes through, he sees immediately that it's occupied. A slim fella with a fairly hefty dick is propped against the sink, another man between his knees, giving him the kind of sloppy head that Bucky’s only ever had once, from an older dame on his nineteenth birthday. The man on his knees notices Bucky watching, and pulls off with a smile and a wink. He freezes for a moment, shocked and gawking, then backs up the way he came, embarrassed and suddenly half hard in his briefs.  
  
For a long minute he stands in the empty hallway, listening to the muffled sounds of the bar, willing his breathing even. He pinches his thigh until his cock begins to soften, but he still can't shake the startled feeling of being too big from his skin. It's like a flock of doves has been roosting under his ribs cage and they've spooked.  
  
Opening and closing his hands, he looks down at them in surprise. He’s always thought it might just be Steve, that any hot-blooded young lad might have up to impure thoughts with pretty eyelashes like Steve’s got. But it's not. It's not just Steve. And here he is in a gay bar in Greenwich Village all worked up over a fella shoving his cock in another man’s mouth, and, _God_ , he needs to get some fresh air, clear his head.  
  
He surges through the crowd, hunting for Steve, shaken by his own gut reaction. Steve emerges from a knot of people by the bar, and Bucky snags him by the arm.  
  
“We need to go,” Bucky says, gripping Steve too hard by his bicep. Steve swings around willingly and reaches for Bucky, but Bucky’s still mortified by his own body, so he shrugs Steve’s hand off.  
  
“What's wrong?” Steve asks, alarmed.  
  
“Not here,” Bucky hisses, and drags Steve towards the exit, beer bottle and all.  
  
They spill into the night, bursting from the crowded bar out onto the street. It's shockingly quiet in comparison, and the muggy summer night is at least fifteen degrees cooler. A breeze gusts through the avenue, and Bucky stands on the sidewalk with his arm around Steve’s elbow, trying to breathe slowly through his nose.  
  
“Buck, what _happened_?” Steve asks, his hand on Bucky’s shoulder.  
  
“Just –” Bucky begins, and he realizes how stupid and backwards it would sound to be shocked at catching two men together at a gay bar. He's been in plenty of dives where fellas will take a dame out to the back alley or in a storage room or even in the bathroom to get a hand up her skirt. He wipes his mouth, “I think I've had a little too much to drink, is all. Got too hot.”  
  
Steve puts his mostly full bottle of beer down on the windowsill outside the bar. There’s boards covering up the glass panes, but Bucky can still hear music through it, dulled to a background buzz punctuated by the occasional percussive thump of drums.  
  
“Do you want to go home?” Steve asks. His hand is warm and dry and soft on the back of Bucky’s neck, and it sends a skittering lick of desire right down Bucky’s spine, like a rock skidding over the frozen surface of a pond. “You don’t look so good.”  
  
And _no_ , Bucky doesn't, because being trapped in the pill box they call an apartment, with the rusting sink fixtures and creaking floorboards and the scent of a city slowly rotting, seems completely unbearable. He has the cash Frankie and Danny gave him in his pocket, and this is Greenwich Village. He's certain he could find them a hotel room for the night, something with a clean mattress and maybe even room service.  
  
He thinks about the men in the bathroom and looks down at Steve, at how his lips are red and bitten. Bucky thinks that road might be too dangerous tonight. He feels like he might do something foolish, feels like he might come apart with how desperately he wants to reach out and recreate that sharp, nearly painful burst of pleasure, catching Steve in the crossfire of his own selfish hunger.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” he says, ducking his head. Steve is looking at him with concern, nothing else. The rest of it is pure, ludicrous fantasy, fueled by his own shocking need to be wanted and heightened by the liquor clouding the last scrap his good judgment. “Let's just get home.”  


*

  
Steve’s quiet for a few days, which bleeds into nearly a week, focused on his canvases with the kind of knife-sharp attention he always gives when a thing moves him, and the tension sitting on Bucky’s shoulders slowly begins to ease away. The summer drags on, one airless day running into the next like faded watercolors, Bucky sweating away the hours: in the dusty back room of Old Man Halloran’s shop, in the gym beating bags until his arms ache, on the docks hauling cargo until he stinks of seawater. Steve doesn't even complain about the smell, not like usual, and leaves Bucky to scrub his grimy socks and salt-stiff trousers out in their sink.  
  
Steve doesn't ask Bucky to go back to the club with him again, and he doesn't seem to go himself, though his art sure enough makes it out of their apartment. They have dinner together, and Steve smiles his blue-eyed sunshine smile at Bucky while he eats with his charcoal-covered fingers, and Bucky wants to scoop Steve up and touch him, just touch every inch of him, because Steve looks so happy Bucky wonders if he ain't dreaming it.  
  
Men and women take shape under Steve’s hand. One, then two, then three. Bucky sits in the kitchen, mending his shirts, shining his shoes, scrubbing dirt from beneath his nails, his exhaustion haunting him. Through the doorway, he can watch Steve work, and the subjects are all as tantalizing as the first, just as thrilling, man and woman. The boxing match at the Rooster lurks at the back of his brain, a half-real specter.  
  
The cash in the coffee tin grows day by day. Sometimes he even lets himself think real hard about the way Steve’s mouth curves when he smiles at Bucky for bringing him dinner, and how that makes heat bloom all over Bucky’s body.  
  
Bucky is elbow deep in sudsy dishwater, pruning up his hands scrubbing their dinnerware when Steve emerges from his bedroom with a finished canvas. He’s wearing the nicest shirt he owns, not one of his belted-up hand-me-downs, and there’s a healthy glow to him, so when he asks Bucky, “Will you come with me tonight?” while brandishing his best smile, Bucky can only answer, “Sure, just give me a minute or two to clean up.”  
  
They get off the subway early, and Bucky follows Steve out into the afternoon, hands stuffed in his pockets, frowning.  
  
“Where we going, pal?” he asks, when Steve stops on the sidewalk to get his bearings. There are plenty of people out, but none of them look much like they belong in this part of Manhattan.  
  
Steve gives him an apologetic look. “There’s a man giving a talk about the war in Europe tonight, and there’s a bunch of folks going to march together to go see it. I thought we could go hear what he has to say before we go dancing.”  
  
“Get you a little cash in your pocket and you think you’re a humanitarian,” Bucky jokes, jostling Steve under his arm, but he might as well go keep Steve out of trouble.  
  
He can't deny he’s a little warmed by the idea of dancing, even if he does have to sit through some fella talking about anti-isolationism and how anyone who doesn't support the war being cowards. Bucky’s about tired to death of that narrative; he knows Steve believes in it, because Steve’s a good man, but in the grand scheme of things, Bucky still isn't so sure sending more kids out to get shot at is a great way to save the world.  
  
It's a short walk to Washington Square Park, where throngs of people have begun to gather. Bucky remembers his ma talking to one of his uncles about the anti-Hitler protests back in the early 30s, before the war was in full swing in Europe. He has an idea of what fascism is, and that it's bad, but he didn't expect the way the square is packed with bodies holding picket signs. Some say things like UNITED AGAINST FASCISM or FEED THE REFUGEES in neat letters. A man wearing a faded Army jacket holds up one end of the American flag.  
  
“Come on, Buck,” Steve says, and he’s fair vibrating with excitement, his blue eyes wide. He looks like an unsupervised kid let loose in a candy shop with fifty dollars. Riling people up is Steve’s specialty, but Bucky casts his gaze out over the men and women chanting and thinks about the news clippings on their icebox again.  
  
Bucky is, like in most things, carried along by the riptide of Steve's enthusiasm. In a flash, he finds himself in the throng of people, Steve’s hand gripping his like a lifeline. All Bucky has in his heart is doubt and a desire for something more than he has, but Bucky can count on Steve’s moral compass to always point true, so he holds on and lets Steve haul him into the heart of the square.  
  
The movement is like an avalanche, like electricity through Bucky’s bones, and it makes him afraid. Someone takes up a chant and it passes through the crowd, like the ripples from a stone dropped in still waters, growing until the noise crashes through the streets and alleys and the whole neighborhood flings open their windows to watch. A group of Spanish nuns carrying anti-fascist signs, the neat red lettering protesting wars Bucky ain't ever even heard of, sue for prayer and aid next to a group of sooty Irish immigrants straight from the factories. A tight knot of women and men that look like college kids hold up signs with crossed out Swastikas.  
  
“What are we marching for?” Bucky asks, and the way these peoples’ hopeful faces are turned up, the noise of the chants, they make him feel real small. But he still don't know why they’re out in the streets, what the purpose of the whole mess is, except to gum up traffic and churn the grass underfoot into mud. Except for the poor folk watching from their windows, there ain’t no audience but themselves, their anger echoing inward. If they’re lucky, they might get a spot in an opinion column on an inside page of the Times.  
  
Steve frowns at him and looks around. “What do you mean? You know what we’re marching for.”  
  
“I don't mean – I know there are bad men,” Bucky says, frustrated by his own insufficiency. He must have some deep flaw of spirit in him, some unkindness towards his fellow man, because all he can think is that if a man were ever shooting at Steve, Bucky would kill him dead, no matter the cause, but he still doesn't want to go off to war. “Who are marching _for_ , Stevie? Who’s this gonna sway? This ain’t gonna move the hearts of those assholes up in D.C. none.”  
  
“It’s not just about making them change,” Steve says. “It's as much showing them we want them to.”  
  
“We got plenty of bad men right here at home,” Bucky says, but Steve only looks disappointed.  
  
“These ain't just bad men, Buck. They wanna kill people just for being themselves,” Steve says. “They're monsters, and they’ve gotten away with it until now because they think we don't care, they think we’re not paying attention. It's up to us to raise our voices and show the rest of the world they’re not alone.”  
  
Bucky looks out at the milling, turbulent throng, then back down at Steve. “I don’t know this’ll make any kind of a difference.”  
  
“Oh, Buck,” Steve says, expression warm, sad. His fingers are soft and dry in Bucky's hand. The crowd moves around them like a current, this thing bigger than all of them put together, and if Bucky’s adrift, Steve’s the lighthouse beacon leading him.  
  
“Stevie,” Bucky says. His belly full of lead. He can’t imagine the horror of it, if even half the headlines are true. “I ain't got much but these hands – Stevie, listen to me. I ain’t got much, but what I got is all yours.”  
  
In that moment, Bucky sees his own headstone, his _here lies James Buchanan Barnes_ , because Bucky might not know a bigger, better thing to fight for, but he knows he loves Steve all the way down to his marrow, and it lights him up from the inside out. It’ll burn him up, kill him young, because Steve’s not an easy man. He’ll go to war for Steve Rogers, fight for him, kill for him, die for him.  
  
“Come on, Buck,” Steve says, just loud enough to be heard, concern legible in every angle of his face. Bucky thinks of the headlines, thinks of the black and white photos of bombed out buildings. HITLER INVADES POLAND. The war is across the ocean, but it might not always be, and Bucky’d like to keep it that way. Steve’s canvas is at his feet, half-forgotten, and both of his cool hands are on Bucky's shoulders. “There’s a war coming, but not tonight. Let’s go dancing.”  


*

  
Bucky descends into the dingy basement below the Mad Rooster, though calling it a basement is generous. The back wall is part of the crumbling remains of a bootlegger’s tunnel, bricked over and half forgotten, and the whole place has an air of being on the verge of collapse. When it rains too much, and the river swells up and the streets flood, the basement fills calf-deep with standing water; there’s a lingering stench of mildew that overlays the odor of rancid food and stale beer.  
  
The men here are mostly not rich men, come straight in from work at the docks or the factories, still stinking of honest labor. Bucky can tell who their whales are by the way they hold themselves apart from the rest of the crowd, like poverty is a disease that's catching.  
  
Bucky gains the slanting little bar before Danny Walsh spots him, and he’s tossing back a double whisky while watching Danny arrow towards him like a hound on the trail of a wounded animal.  
  
“Jimmy, you made it,” Danny says. “Good to see you didn’t walk out on us. I’ve heard deserting runs in your family.”  
  
“Walsh,” Bucky says, arranging himself lazily on a bar stool, fighting back the sudden flare of anger that grips him by the guts. Danny is just trying to rattle his cage. “I see you’ve managed to drag yourself back out of the gutter.” He makes a show of looking Danny up and down. “Just barely.”  
  
“You got a smart mouth, Barnes,” Danny says, grinning wide and ugly. “Best be careful before someone does something about it.”  
  
“What did I tell you? Leave off Barnes,” Frankie says, emerging from behind the bar out of a narrow brick archway hung with a rope and sign that reads STAFF ONLY. “Boss’ll be pissed if you start shit before the fight is over. Save it until MacDougal tenderizes him a bit for you.”  
  
“Maybe I could warm him up for MacDougal instead,” Danny says.  
  
Bucky and Frankie both ignore him, and Bucky reaches behind the bar for a bottle to serve himself, the bartender having made himself scarce. They’re well out of earshot of the bookie with the crowd of eager gamblers, so Bucky asks, “What’s the deal, then? Let MacDougal rough me up for a few rounds then play fainting damsel when he chins me?”  
  
“Down in the sixth round,” Frankie says. “Boss wants a good fight. Something to get his new friends’ blood going, so don't fuck it up.”  
  
“Be sure to smile extra pretty for the front row,” Danny sneers. “Can’t wait to see MacDougal rough up that sweet fairy mouth of yours.”  
  
Bucky lifts the bottle in Danny’s direction, a slow, angry smile pinning itself to his features. Danny Walsh never did have an ounce of class, and Bucky’s willing to bet as uncouth as he is, that Danny’s done his own share of rough trade. Bucky says lazily, “Feel free to think about whatever gets your motor running, pal.”  
  
“Ain’t you got things to be doing?” Frankie asks. “I got business to settle before the fight starts and I don't need you starting a scene.”  
  
They leave Bucky alone and the bartender doesn't ask for the bottle back when he returns from his timely absence. It's cheap liquor – most of what’s served here is, none of it what’s on the label, refilled with the watered-down dregs of whatever bootleg swill they could scrounge up. Or worse, something distilled in the back basement, and like as not to make a man go blind.  
  
He abandons the bottle on the counter a few fingers lighter, his belly warmer than when he came down the stairs. Men have gathered around the makeshift boxing ring set up by a pair of lads no more than ten or eleven years old.  
  
MacDougal is a short man, barely cresting five and a half feet, with a mean expression and the kind of brutish face a certain kind of gal seems to find appealing. He’s in the ring in a flash, quick and mad-looking, all coiled up like a rattlesnake, lean and dangerous. Bucky’s twice the fighter MacDougal is, but he reckons the way MacDougal’s flexing at the crowd, they’re both going to look like raw meat by the time the sixth round rolls around.  
  
They want a show, though, and Bucky knows well enough how to do that. He doesn't know if MacDougal’s in on the cut or not, but even if Bucky’s the fall guy, he knows how to make a spectacular mess of another man’s face.  
  
The crowd parts to let him through, reluctantly at first, but with some measure of interest when they realize he’s part of the evening’s entertainment. He steps through the ropes and leans back on the corner post opposite MacDougal, peeling his shirt off. There’s a certain similarity between fucking and fighting with the kind of men that frequent these establishments, and the sight of exposed flesh and impending violence riles them up real good.  
  
The referee enters the ring, and they square off after some inflated jawing about their fight statistics. Money changes hands; betting closes, and Bucky rolls his bare shoulders, tapping his gloves against MacDougal's like the good bait dog they want him to be.  
  
MacDougal kisses his rosary and drops it across his bare chest, and Bucky thinks of Steve. Getting his hands dirty is just what Bucky’s destined to do, so he doesn't try to feint out of the way when MacDougal takes a hard swing right into his ribs. He bends with the blow, but Bucky feels it all the way through his spine when it connects.  
  
A second blow staggers him, and Bucky comes through it swinging with his left. Not a single amateur Bucky’s fought has ever expected him opening southpaw, and MacDougal’s no prizefighter, so he reels backwards when Bucky’s gloved fist connects with his jaw. He doesn't go down, the punch pulled, but it shakes him up all the same. MacDougal shuffles back out of arm’s reach for a handful of seconds, whipping his head from side to side like a dog coming out of water, and wipes his mouth with the stained wrist of his glove.  
  
Six rounds. Eighteen minutes of fighting to just to lose, and he can already taste blood when MacDougal clips him across the chin.  
  
He thinks of the money promised and how he wants to give Steve the whole damn world: all he’s got are his own two hands, and if they have to be bent to hurting other people to get what he needs, then so be it. There’s never guarantee of a payout, but the kind of fellas he’s taking crooked cash from tend towards greasing the wheels of their operatives, if only to keeping them twisting on the line.  
  
Things are changing fast in the world – Steve’s outgrowing him, the world is at war, the tone of the city has shifted, and the future is marching inexorably closer – but this, this raw and visceral violence, Bucky knows this.  
  
MacDougal is a slippery bastard, and resists any efforts Bucky makes to pen him in. He skirts just around Bucky’s reach and darts inside to land a flurry of rapid blows that Bucky only halfway blocks.  
  
The bell sounds for the first round, and Bucky slumps onto the stool provided, winded and aching. A man in a newsboy cap passes him a bottle of liquor, so he tosses a few swallows back, the burning rush in his belly matching the ache in his side. His cheek and chin are sore, and there’s blood on his teeth, but he still has four full rounds to wail on MacDougal, and for MacDougal to ring his gong a few times before kicking his teeth in.  
  
Frankie appears ringside, emerging from the crop of tightly-bunched factory workers like a shark out of deep waters. He’s holding a cool towel and offers it to Bucky, saying only, “Don’t forget who’s paying you.”  
  
“Fuck you.” Bucky wipes the sweat from his face and spits blood onto the dirty floor.  
  
Fortified by the liquor and his own needling desire to punch Frankie in his smug fucking face, Bucky hauls himself back into the center of the ring.  
  
By the fifth round, he’s sporting evidence of brutalization: his lip is split like a melon, his brow oozing blood, scalp bleeding, ribs hard done by. MacDougal isn't much better, prey to Bucky’s big fists, but he seems to just get madder the more Bucky knocks him about. When the bell sounds for the end of the round and Bucky is staggering, more bruise than body, but he’s still got his feet under him and that’s all that really matters.  
  
Frankie is waiting by the corner again, grinning that awful grin, and Bucky wants to haul off, lay him flat, lay them all flat, because not a single one of them gives a shit that two men are beating each other’s faces in for fun. All they want is their dog to win, to see a little blood.  
  
“The fuck is your problem, Barnes?” MacDougal asks, swaying a little when their squat referee breaks them apart. There ain't too many rules with a house game like this. Both of them got sense and experience enough to not hit a man in the jewels what don't deserve it, but there’s plenty of other lasting hurt you can put on a fella, even with gloves on.  
  
“Getting tired?” he asks MacDougal, with an amount of swagger he doesn't feel. MacDougal’s mad about the fight, clear as day he don't know about the match fixing. Bucky ain't about to be the one to spill the beans.  
  
“Quit fucking around,” MacDougal says. He has a fledgling shiner and his face looks a little like raw beef. If Bucky wasn’t trying to lose, MacDougal would be laid cold already and they both know it.  
  
There’s not much Bucky can do to help MacDougal out, so he taps his gloves to MacDougal’s and then takes a mean, sloppy swing that grazes MacDougal’s ear as he ducks below it.  
  
“Christ, Barnes,” MacDougal snarls. “You’re gonna get it.”  
  
“Hearing a lot of talk,” Bucky says, and he can’t deny he’s soused, a little mean and too wound up to fight very well even if he weren’t. He’s got a lot of heat in his belly, and some of it’s anger at being fought like an animal for entertainment, and some of it is at himself, some at Steve, some at him wanting so much more than he’s ever gonna get. His da crawls up out of the bottom of a liquor bottle and says, with Bucky’s mouth, like Bucky’s a marionette on strings, “This a ladies’ social or a boxing match?”  
  
“Ain’t take you for a prick,” MacDougal says, as the referee shoves them both out of a grapple. “Or a drunk, for that matter.”  
  
“Don’t know me very well then. I’m a mean son of a bitch, take after my da like that,” Bucky says, and swings hard.  
  
MacDougal weaves out of the way, but his glove still skids painfully along the line of MacDougal’s neck and head. The retaliating blow comes from below, straight into Bucky’s diaphragm, and there’s one shocked second where the world tilts and then he’s done it, he doesn’t even need to fake it, because one second he’s upright swinging and the next he’s laid out in a sprawl on the grimy floor, every inch of him aching and dazed.  
  
For the space of a few heartbeats, he thinks about climbing to his feet, fixed match be damned. He can't get his breath, sucking in gasping breaths that feel like nothing.  
  
The audience, packed tight around the ring and stinking with heat and grime, roar with the sheer violence of it. It’s all over fast as it starts, and then he’s face-down with blood in his mouth. The referee starts counting, and Bucky struggles halfway to his knees before pitching forward, face down in the dirt, full of bile. They declare the fight, and he’s suddenly old news.  
  
A fella Bucky’s never seen before and probably never will again squats beside him and declares Bucky out for the count, and Bucky’s scraped off the dirty brick by rough hands and laid on his stool like a wrung-out towel. MacDougal is gone in a heartbeat, swept away to be mopped and pampered as the victor, while Bucky collects the shattered remains of his pride from the trampled, bloody floor.  
  
“Little something for your trouble, Barnes,” Frankie says, emerging from the group. He must not be collecting the bets personally, because he shakes a little stoppered vial of laudanum in front of Bucky’s face. “You look a fucking mess.”  
  
Bucky pops the cap and takes the handout, licking his teeth to get at the copper blood and the sharp, bitter taste of the drugs. MacDougal did a pretty good job of rattling his brainpan. “Might have to bill you for the dentist.”  
  
“Not unless you want to owe the company store,” Frankie says, all teeth. “Pull yourself together. Your face looks like a fucking murder scene.” He dumps a grubby towel in Bucky’s lap and turns to go.  
  
Bucky pries himself off the stool and follows Frankie’s retreating back through the door to the storage room. There’s money scraped together on a rickety table and a few crates of empty liquor bottles with scuffed labels, waiting to be refilled. “You got my cut?” Bucky demands. His head is swimming a little from the booze and the lack of oxygen, but he can stand straight enough to remember that he did this for a payout.  
  
“In a hurry to get home to your little ducky, Barnes?” Frankie asks. “Rumor about the town says you’re a little sly for that scrappy little fairy boy you’ve got tucked away in your love nest.”  
  
“What I do with my time is none of your business,” Bucky says, bristling, as he strips off his gloves and tosses them on the floor. A few drunks are crowing about their victory behind them, the sound muffled by the old brick. No one would hear if he wound up and beat the shit out of Frankie. “I did what you wanted. It’s your turn to keep up your end of the deal.”  
  
“Maybe next time we put him in the ring, see as to what he’s made from.” Frankie says, pushing into Bucky’s space. Bucky knows he can take Frankie, even as big as he is, but he turns his face away. “Maybe he’d be willing to get his hands dirty. There’s plenty of rich perverts that’d like to do a bit of transacting with a little guy like him.”  
  
“Fuck you, you asshole,” Bucky says, but he’s a kicked dog, his heart on the floor. Knocking Frankie out won’t get him anywhere but into more trouble, and it won't make a lick of difference about what he thinks of Steve. A fight with him is a fight with a whole lot of mean fellas that like tuning up on people for fun, and Bucky ain’t no hero. It makes him sick to hear those words out of Frankie’s mouth, but it makes him even sicker to think what the kind of men they sell to would do to Steve. “Leave Steve outta this.”  
  
“Take your fucking prize money and go, Barnes, before you do something irretrievably stupid,” Frankie says, scooping a wad of cash out of a bag with his big mitts and dumping it into Bucky’s hands. “Boss sweetened the deal a little, for being such a good sport on short notice.”  
  
It’s like watching a trawler pull her catch up, like green salmon spilling through the net of Bucky's fingers. Bucky just stands there, stunned, letting the greenbacks rain from his hand while his pride wallows in the mud. He can barely see, and for a second he thinks he’s been hit too hard, that he’s going blind, but his eyes prickle with tears, relief washing over him.  
  
Frankie turns his back, says “Business is done here, Barnes,” and lights his cigarette. “Don’t worry about your precious little friend. You’re small fish.”  


*

  
Steve’s still awake when Bucky works up the bravery to drag himself up the stairs and into their narrow railroad apartment, shucking his coat and boots at the door. Bucky can see Steve kneeling at the foot of his bed, arms folded in, rosary wrapped around his thin hand, quietly counting out his _Hail Mary_ s. He’s a right sight, his hair ruffled, one of Bucky’s old nightshirts hanging off one narrow shoulder, and Bucky’s opinion of that would make the Virgin Mother blush.  
  
Steve looks up, tucking his rosary under the blanket folded over the foot of his bed. It’s the prettiest thing in their apartment, a little cream number with blue stripes, and the last thing that Sarah Rogers crocheted before they’d sent her down to the sanatorium for tuberculosis.  
  
“What happened to you?” Steve asks.  
  
Steve unbends, leaning against the footboard to steady himself. Bucky takes half a step forward, lurching to help, but Steve gets his coltish legs under himself. No telling how long he’d been kneeling there; Bucky’s been out since sunrise, gone straight from work to the Rooster, and it’s nearing one in the morning.  
  
“It ain’t that bad.” Bucky moves to swat Steve’s reaching hand away, but his protests fall flat because Steve skims his knuckles over Bucky’s cheek, feather light, and Bucky can’t move. Steve’s fingertips are cold, like a balm on Bucky’s bruised skin, and he wonders if Steve touched him too hard, would he just burst on the spot and pour out all the awful secrets he’s been keeping.  
  
“How long you let them beat on you, Buck?” Steve’s mouth turns down at both corners, and there’s a line between his brow that Bucky wants to reach up and smooth out. “You don’t get beat like this in a legal match.”  
  
“Hardly a match is, these days,” Bucky says, and Steve can’t refute that. Most of the funding backing the city is coming in from crime, and it’s easy enough to pay off a fighter to rig a match and win a few dirty bets.  
  
“You can’t get mixed up in mob business again,” Steve says, and he don’t seem to be asking nicely. His shoulders are squared, like he’s looking for a fight, but Bucky ain’t got any time tonight for fighting fair. “They’re gonna end up killing you.”  
  
“I’ll be fine,” Bucky says. “And anyways, it’s New York. Hardly a thing here that isn’t mafia or mob or crooked politicians running the game. A man can barely make an honest living between the rationing and the crooks.”  
  
Steve gestures to Bucky’s face, which is likely a lot uglier looking than when he left home, but he can still feel all his parts, so he figures he got a decent deal out of it. But Steve asks, “You call this fine?”  
  
“The mob ain’t exactly about loving thy neighbor,” Bucky says. He lets Steve crowd him back into the kitchen, all hundred pounds of him hustling Bucky’s bulk through the narrow corridor between their mismatched furniture. When Steve makes a frustrated noise, Bucky says, “Look, they gave me a piece of the pot if the match went in their favor, down in the sixth. Easy as pie. I can take you down to Coney Island now.”  
  
That seems to be the tipping point for Steve, though. “If you ever leave the country,” Steve says with the sort of impressive viciousness he reserves for when Bucky’s really worked him up, “they’ll finally find a way to put a man on the moon, because you’ll take all the stupid with you.”  
  
Bucky bristles, hurt and wrong-footed about his bad decisions, because it’s usually Steve that makes the lion’s share of them, for all Bucky’s earned himself a rough reputation cleaning up Steve’s messes. “Ain’t like I need your permission. I threw a fight and made some cash. Didn’t hurt nothing permanent.” He pushes Steve’s hand away, and Steve glares up at him. “Didn’t need to come home and get henpecked.”  
  
It’s a mean thing to say. Something like Bucky’s da would have said before the drinking rotted his gut out and left the Barnes family in peace. Regret settles over him like a mantle, heavy and clutching.  
  
Steve goes quiet, mouth all twisted up. He puts his back to Bucky, bending over the sink, and that takes all the spiteful wind right out of Bucky’s sails, Bucky’s anger flattening out into exhaustion. Bucky leans towards him and puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder, but Steve just shrugs it off.  
  
“Sit down,” Steve directs, and boy does that hurt. “Don’t bleed all over the floor. I just swept.”  
  
“Sure thing, boss,” Bucky says, probing the inside of his lower lip with his tongue, checking for blood. His mouth still tastes coppery, salty, like sweat and grime.  
  
Bucky sprawls out in one of the few mismatched dining chairs that aren’t covered in art supplies or half-mended work clothes.  
  
Steve comes at him at an angle with a clean rag, and he has Sarah Rogers’ touch, firm but careful, when he begins to scrub away the worst of the dried blood sheeting the side of Bucky’s face. Bucky holds his face still, because as ill-tempered as he is, he’s not a fool, and Steve’d just chase him down to nurse him anyhow.  
  
“At least he didn't crack your skull,” Steve says, close enough that his breath stirs the air between them. He smells a little like clean laundry left out in the sun.  
  
“You’re one to talk, getting yourself into scrapes all the time,” Bucky bristles. “And I can’t see you’re doing yourself any favors hanging out with that crowd over in the Village.”  
  
“You worry too much about me, Bucky,” Steve says, frowning. “Nobody’s bothered me so far.”  
  
Bucky reaches up and catches Steve’s wrist, unaccountable jealousy bubbling up beneath his sternum. Of all the evil things in the world to feel, jealousy is one Bucky knows he has no right to, but it still comes on him out of nowhere, rushing up until he feels suddenly sick with all the things he can’t have. “Did you go down there without me today?”  
  
“I had another piece to sell,” Steve says. “What’s got you all wound up? You go off to get your brains bashed in and you kick up a fuss about me?”  
  
“Maybe I just don’t like the idea of you sticking your fool neck out for a bunch of people who want you to buy in to their ideology,” Bucky says, thick and stupid with pain and a few drinks and his own goddamned cowardice. “Maybe I just don’t like you outta my sight getting into trouble.”  
  
Steve looks him up and down, and Bucky has the feeling of being taken apart under Steve’s shrewd gaze. That’s something Steve always was good at – ripping right to the heart of the situation, taking a Bucky down with a word and a look that made Bucky feel like he was nothing more than machine parts waiting for assembly on the factory floor.  
  
“James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve says, eyes flashing. “Green is an ugly color on you.”  
  
And ain't that the truth of it. Steve could always see the lay of the land better than Bucky could, and he is jealous, full up with it, green all the way to his gills. Jealous, and angry, and tired of having nothing he wants all the time.  
  
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bucky lies, because he just got his face shoved in the dirt once tonight and he ain't looking to have it done again by the one person who could really hurt him.  
  
Steve scowls at Bucky. “This is a double standard, is what it is.”  
  
“It's not a double standard, it’s just different,” Bucky says, fighting for the words to explain. He sees that Steve assumes the worst, that Bucky thinks that Steve can’t stick up for himself, can't take care of himself – and maybe sometimes that’s true, but even Bucky needs a little help now and then. The cold and ugly truth of it is that Bucky would rather walk straight into the Hudson wearing concrete shoes than live a day without Steve. He don't think Steve would feel the same in the other direction.  
  
Bucky has never been half as good a man as Steve, but they've lived in each other's pockets for years, and losing Steve would be like losing his conscience. He knows for sure he’d be in trouble without Steve – he’d have belled Frankie when he had the chance, had gone up against the whole world, because in the end that’s the difference between Steve and Bucky: Steve, with his weak body and short life expectancy ain’t never had a thing to lose that he doesn't already expect to lose. Bucky has Steve.  
  
“You’re always running off into danger,” Steve says, raising his voice, shoulders hunched up like the only thing stopping him from taking a swing at Bucky is the state of his face. “You can't well go scolding me for doing exactly what you do. I told you I could take care of myself, and I am.”  
  
Bucky rounds on Steve, incredulous. “Me? _I’m_ the one that gets myself in trouble?” It's absolutely absurd that Steve would think _Bucky_ is the risk taker, out of the two of them. “Says the man who thinks the best way to handle a disagreement is with his fists. I wasn't even fighting someone that didn't sign up for a bruise or two.”  
  
Standing up straighter, real fury flashes in Steve’s eyes, and Bucky knows he's in for it. He’s bad tempered enough that he'll gladly take another one on the chin, because Steve damn well isn't laying the blame for his routine heroics at Bucky's door.  
  
“I try to do the right thing,” Steve says. “I always just try to do the right thing. You don't expect me to stand down when –”  
  
“Whatever you finish that sentence with, Steve Rogers, it ain't your job to fight the whole world,” Bucky snaps. “You’re going to get yourself killed one day leading with your chin. It's utter foolishness.”  
  
“Who else is gonna do it?” Steve looks angry, maybe angrier than Bucky’s ever seen him, and Bucky’s almost certain he’s gonna get decked at some point soon. He’ll fold for a lot, go right down for Steve, get on his knees and beg if Steve wants him to, but Bucky’s getting real tired of being told he can't take care of the best damn person he’s ever known. Getting his brains beat in is a lark compared to seeing Steve suffer because they can't afford to keep him healthy.  
  
“I don't know.” Bucky curls his hands into fists. “Maybe I damn well will, if it’ll keep you outta trouble.”  
  
Advancing on Bucky, Steve shoves him hard enough Bucky’s back hits the wall. Steve comes with him though, hands tangled up in Bucky’s suspenders, yanking them down off his shoulder. “Fine. _Fine_ , you wanna keep me out of trouble, you put your money where your mouth is.”  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Steve looks like one of his early paintings, a study in determined anger, a red slash of pastel for his frowning mouth. “You don’t want me going out, not to have fun, not to find models for _work_ , so you’re going to model for me. Isn’t that what you said? You’d keep me _safe_?”  
  
Bucky makes to shove Steve back, outraged, but Steve grabs the front of Bucky’s shirt and yanks it open, loose buttons rolling across the floor, and Bucky just gapes at Steve, gobsmacked.  
  
Steve is breathing hard, in a strop, but he reaches for Bucky’s belt loop, an absolute vision, pink mouth wet and blue eyes blazing. All Bucky’s flash-in-the-pan, knee-jerk anger shrivels up when he realizes what Steve’s angling for.  
  
Bucky catches his hand, and asks, low, “You think this is _safer_?” His own voice is rough, heavy with sudden desire.  
  
There’s not even a flicker of hesitation when Steve works his fingers beneath the tongue of Bucky’s belt and yanks it open, two spots of outraged color high in his cheeks. Steve stops, breathing hard, and looks up at Bucky, his gaze burning from head to hip, his mouth parted. Bucky’s erection strains against the front of his trousers, and Steve’s hand flutters over it.  
  
“ _Look_ at you,” Steve says, in a startled, strangled sort of way that goes straight down Bucky’s spine. Steve's expression morphs from righteous fury to awe and Bucky shudders under Steve’s scrutiny. “God above. Is _this_ why you didn't want me to go?”  
  
It almost undoes Bucky when Steve reaches out and touches the firm plane of Bucky’s abdomen with a trembling hand.  
  
“Stevie,” Bucky says, a warning and a plea in one, because this is something Bucky won’t be able to walk back, not once they cross this line. There’s over a decade of tightly-wound friendship coiled between them, and Bucky won’t have it come tumbling down like the Tower of Babel. A desire for Steve has crawled under his skin, burrowing in deep, itching, and he isn’t sure that it’ll ever be satisfied once he starts down that road.  
  
Steve sounds tormented when he asks, “Bucky? Why didn’t you say something?”  
  
“What good would that have done?” Bucky croaks.  
  
“Tell me,” Steve says, voice pitched low. It’s unfamiliar on Steve, but Bucky recognizes the way a man sounds when he wants something. “I want to know. Do you –” he looks down the line of Bucky’s body and touches Bucky’s hip and Bucky _burns_ for the way Steve asks, “Buck?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky says, and he can't see straight, because Steve's hand is on his bare skin. “Yeah, yeah, Stevie, _God_ , I do.”  
  
Steve tumbles against him, groping hungrily at his bare skin. It’s only half a second before Steve’s pushing himself up on his toes and reaching for Bucky, and Bucky – Bucky’s helpless for Steve, because Steve has had both hands around Bucky’s heart for as long as Bucky can remember.  
  
He doesn’t know what to do except lean into it when Steve kisses him, eyes squeezed closed, clumsy, mouth open and tongue seeking. Bucky gives it to him as good as he can, cupping Steve’s face between his palms while Steve clutches at Bucky’s shoulders, until Steve eases up and lets himself be kissed, lets Bucky slide his mouth, hot and sweet, against Steve’s.  
  
He’s breathing hard when he pulls away, and Steve looks dazed, like he’s taken a punch. Bucky knows, with unerring certainty, that Steve's expression means trouble, because that's not the look of a man who wanted to try something and found out it wasn't for him. The bottom drops out of Bucky’s stomach, and fear and desire war for control.  
  
“What are you doing?” Bucky asks Steve, because this is more than reckless. This is _dangerous_ , this isn’t a night out at a club with a bunch of sympathetic souls – this is them, in their home, with their gossipy neighbors listening at the walls. This is something Bucky can’t talk their way out of it because no police officer will believe them when they say, _no sir, we won't do it again, it was just this once, had a bit too much to drink_.  
  
“I thought that was pretty apparent.” Steve crowds against him, eager, and Bucky stops him with both hands on Steve’s shoulders. Bucky isn't sure if Steve is oblivious to the consequences, or if that's just part of the thrill.  
  
“This is a bad idea,” Bucky says, but he knows he's not going to put up any kind of fight if Steve keeps looking up at him like that. Steve licks his lip and – _God_ , if there’s a Hell, if something this good could be wrong, then Bucky is damn sure boarding the direct train voluntarily.  
  
“Look,” Steve says, squaring up like he’s haggling down at the fish market and not eating away at Bucky's heart, “you don’t like it, you just say the word, and we can just go on our way and call it water under the bridge.”  
  
“You absolute idiot,” Bucky says. “You're going to get us both arrested.”  
  
“Buck, it ain't right,” Steve says. “It ain't right to be afraid of loving –”  
  
“Steve Rogers, it ain't about what’s right, and it ain’t about _love_.” As soon as he says it, Bucky knows he’s fighting a losing battle. He's been fighting a losing battle damn near since the first day he met Steve, who seems determined to take every opportunity to risk life and limb to be _good_ and _righteous_ – like nature and God aren't already working to take him away from Bucky. “There are _laws_.”  
  
“Jesus said –” And that's the end of Bucky’s patience, because no way is he going to quote scripture at Bucky, not when Bucky has prayed at Steve's bed while Steve was sick and sick and sick and Bucky could practically feel Steve crumbling away between his fingers, prayers unanswered. Steve could’ve crumbled away right under Bucky’s hands and Bucky would’ve held on right through it, but it feels ugly of Steve to bring God into something that God ain't never seemed to want a hand in.  
  
“Jesus doesn’t run the constabulary in the state of New York, now does he?” Bucky says, with force, incensed by Steve. That's nothing new, though, because Steve's full of radical, lunatic ideas and since they were ten and eleven it's been Bucky that cashes the check Steve's big mouth writes. Sometimes Steve's crazier than a sack of wet cats, but he’s rarely _wrong_ , and he always keeps his word. “I don't see him down at the polls casting his ballot for the president, or marching against the conflict in Europe, or sitting for equal rights, now do you?”  
  
Before Steve can work himself into a froth, Bucky seizes him and walks him backwards towards Steve’s bedroom. If he's going to get clapped in irons and hauled away for indecency, he’s damn sure going to take whatever Steve's offering in the meantime.  
  
Steve demands, “What’re you doing?”  
  
“Exactly what you want,” Bucky says. He pushes Steve through the doorway of Steve’s cramped bedroom and hooks a leg behind Steve’s, tumbling them both down into the bed. Steve doesn't have time to look startled; he's a smart man, smarter than anyone ever reckons, and adaptable, so he's already wiggling up against Bucky as soon as Bucky gets a hand on Steve’s belt.  
  
“I ain't never done this,” Steve mumbles. He sounds a little shaky, uncertain, but it doesn't stop him from peeling Bucky’s shirt the rest of the way off, and it doesn't stop him from attaching himself like a lamprey to Bucky, his slender limbs everywhere all at once.  
  
“You just relax.” Bucky slips the suspenders off Steve's narrow shoulders, unbuttons his shirt; when he pulls the fabric apart and exposes the slim expanse of Steve's chest he sucks in a breath. Steve is small and pale and Bucky wants to cover Steve with himself, so he wrangles Steve down onto the mattress and does exactly that, one leg between Steve’s thighs and a hand keeping Steve on his back.  
  
Looking at Steve like this, it’s easy enough to forget about everything else. No news reports, no impending war, no watching the neighborhood slowly struggle to its feet again, only to be knocked back down by embargos or rationing or businesses closing down. Bucky is fearful, wondering, downright reverent when he bends down and kisses Steve. He feels like he’s going to burst open, like all his secrets are in Steve’s hands, like Steve’s got his fingers around Bucky’s heart and is squeezing, and Bucky feels small next to how much he wants this, now that Steve’s opened him wide up.  
  
Steve’s fingers close over Bucky’s biceps, holding them together, hot like matches and a gas can. Bucky mouths down Steve’s stubbled jaw, bites his collar bone, licks the tender skin at the hollow of Steve’s throat, laying kisses between the wings of his clavicles.  
  
“Buck,” Steve pleads. Bucky can feel Steve hard against his hip and catches Steve’s soft moan with his mouth when he sneaks a hand between them and palms Steve through his pants.  
  
“Stevie,” Bucky says, voice hoarse, tender, overwhelmed. “Damn my soul to Hell if it's wrong of me, but I want to feel you.”  
  
Steve knows well enough which way to go, even if he ain't never been here before. He’s steady about getting Bucky’s clothes off, helps Bucky with his own because Bucky’s hands are shaking, and then they’re naked under the dim light of Steve’s lamp.  
  
“What do you want me to do?” Steve asks, laid out like a feast for Bucky.  
  
“Just you relax. Never done it with another fella, but I'll make it feel good.” Bucky strokes up Steve’s legs, hungry for more of Steve. For Steve’s skin, his sweet little mouth, his clutching hands, the brazen expanse of his naked body. “I want to make you feel so good.”  
  
“Lotta talk,” Steve says, mouth slanted and soft with his smile, and Bucky figures it’s a problem that Steve can still make wiseass remarks. “D’you wanna –” Steve makes a suggestive gesture, a little pink in the face. “We’ve got some Vaseline.”  
  
“One thing at a time,” Bucky says, because Steve is hard as a rock just from a little kissing and Bucky's been thinking about those fellas he interrupted back at the bar. Thinking Steve’d look real good with his hands in Bucky’s hair, fucking into his mouth like that.  
  
“What –” Steve starts, jerking when Bucky plants a kiss on the soft skin below his navel and nudges Steve’s legs apart. Desire turns Bucky’s belly into molten heat when he grazes the tip of Steve’s cock with his lower lip, the head of it damp and salty. Steve squeezes his eyes closed with a tiny, breathless, “ _Oh_ ,” jaw slack and his pretty mouth hanging open.  
  
Some of the fellas he works with say any action is good action, but Bucky can't do anything for Steve by half measures. He wraps his hand around the length of Steve. Steve ain’t no wilting flower, but Bucky handles him with reverence, admiring the way his cock is red at the tip, flushed and curved and glistening with a droplet of semen. And Bucky’s surprised to find that Steve smells good here, like he always does, thick and masculine where his cock springs from the gentle curls adorning the narrow cradle of his pelvis.  
  
He gets his mouth around the head and Steve makes a noise like he’s been wounded. Bucky cups Steve’s balls, feeling the soft weight and heat of them, and takes Steve down as far as he can, swallowing around the Steve’s cock, until he nearly gags on it, greedy for the taste of him.  
  
“Buck,” Steve gasps, alarmed, yanking at Bucky’s hair to no avail. “I’m gonna – slow down –”  
  
But this is what Bucky’s angling for. He wraps his hand around the base of Steve’s cock and looks up at Steve, who’s watching him with wide, startled eyes, mouth hanging open.  
  
He feels the tense and shift of Steve’s body, the way the rhythm changes. Steve’s skin shines with exertion, flushed and warm and smooth beneath Bucky’s free hand where he strokes it up Steve’s side. The jarring little thrusts Steve makes grow erratic, Steve’s breath shallow little puffs every time the head of his cock drags across the soft palate of Bucky’s mouth, and _good God,_ there it is, just what Bucky wants.  
  
The salty, sticky heat fills Bucky’s mouth, Steve’s iron fingers in Bucky’s hair, and he lets Steve fuck his mouth straight through the orgasm, Bucky’s own cock hard enough to drive nails and weeping slickly into the sheets.  
  
He barely sounds like himself when he pulls off, voice hoarse, and covetously asks, “God, Stevie, can I fuck you?”  
  
Too winded to answer, Steve just nods, pushing Bucky’s hair out of his eyes. His gaze is warm, soft, unfocused.  
  
They keep Vaseline in the kitchen, a jar they share, because Steve shrivels up like a raisin in the winter and Bucky’s hands see hard use. It's only the work of a minute to find it, Bucky fumbling eagerly in the dim apartment for the little glass container, but it feels like forever. When he returns, Steve’s laid out, propped on one elbow and looking at Bucky like Bucky’s just hung the moon.  
  
“I’m gonna draw you like this one day,” Steve says, raking his gaze down the length of Bucky’s body. It's a bit disconcerting to have all that focus turned on him, but his shins hit the edge of the bed and he’s half falling on Steve, full of disorienting desire. Steve meets him halfway, lean arms around Bucky’s neck before Bucky can even think to do anything but climb on top of him again.  
  
Bucky fumbles one-handed with the jar of Vaseline, jacking Steve with the other. Steve is breathing shallow, winded, his cock already hardening again, damp and slippery with saliva and smooth in the curve of Bucky’s palm.  
  
It ain't nothing like the crude talk makes it out to be; Steve’s as pretty as could be, splayed out for Bucky like he is, and he takes the blunt tip of Bucky’s index finger with barely a sound, just an exhalation.  
  
“I didn't know,” Steve says. Bucky slows up and Steve evens out, rocking his hips against Bucky’s hand, like he ain't even aware he’s doing it. “Buck, I didn't know, or I’d have – this is –”  
  
“You shut up,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds like it's crumbling. “I’m right here.” He doesn’t want to say he ain’t going, because one day he will, or one day Steve will, but he wants to treasure these moments. Bucky hunches over Steve, kisses him hard, and Steve kisses right back like he wants to climb into Bucky’s mouth, brutal and wonderful and beautiful.  
  
He gets his second finger in, and when he strokes them along the inside of Steve, he must touch something good, because Steve makes an electrified sound and yanks at Bucky’s hair. Eagerly, Bucky goes down, exploring Steve’s neck and chest with his mouth, tasting his skin, finding a rhythm inside Steve that draws out those tiny, desperate noises, until Steve catches his wrist.  
  
“You keep doing that,” Steve confesses, “I’m not gonna last much longer.”  
  
“That good?” Bucky asks, slowly withdrawing from the depths of Steve’s body.  
  
“Yeah, Buck, come on,” Steve says, digging his fingers into Bucky’s shoulders while Bucky lines himself up, pressing the tip of his slicked-up cock against the entrance of Steve’s body. “I ain't gonna break.”  
  
“More worried about myself,” Bucky mutters. He slides a few inches in and Steve arches up off the bed. Bucky has to grapple with him, hands on Steve’s hips, holding him down, holding Steve halfway impaled on his cock, and Bucky almost loses it right there in the slippery grip of Steve’s body.  
  
“Oh, Buck, I can feel –” and whatever Steve’s gonna say is bitten off in favor of a low groan.  
  
“Yeah. I know, Steve. Yeah,” Bucky says, and he can feel every inch of himself, feel Steve’s pulse in the tight ring of muscle stretched around his girth. For a moment it feels like Bucky hasn’t done enough with his fingers and his mouth, like he’s going to split Steve wide open trying to get inside, then he makes it all the way in to the heat of Steve’s body, that slide of Steve’s body gripping around the base of his cock like a vise.  
  
“Hang on, just let me –” Steve starts, then stops, looking up at Bucky, breathing hard.  
  
“Jesus,” Bucky says, fumbling for a kiss. It’s almost too much. His heart is beating like a timpani, like a full celebration, like a whole festival, come alive just for Steve. He lingers against Steve, sampling the way Steve’s bottom lip slides against his own, then says, “The way you fucking feel.”  
  
Steve’s eyes crinkle at the corners, cheeks rosy with joy, and Bucky bends down to kiss him. He thrusts slow, experimental, and repeats it when Steve moans into his mouth and slings both arms around his neck.  
  
He drags Steve into his lap, one big palm nearly spanning the trim line of Steve’s waist, and he isn't sure how Steve is holding it together. It doesn't seem quite fair that Steve looks so sweet when Bucky feels like he’s falling apart. When he leans back for leverage, he can watch the wet way he disappears into Steve’s body, and he doesn't know how that makes him feel, except like he’s hot and cold all at once, full of wonder and desire and dread, because it don't feel like life will let him have something this good without some sort of awful price.  
  
But Steve curls against Bucky, straddling him in the narrow bed, his pink mouth worrying Bucky’s skin. Bucky rolls his hips and Steve makes a sound that’s belly deep, like it's torn from inside him, and shudders. He feels good, so good, so Bucky does it again and again, fucking him solid and deep until Steve’s sweaty fingers are slipping on Bucky’s, shoulders and Steve is drawing breaths in silent gasps.  
  
They’re open and raw together. Bucky holds Steve’s face with one big hand and surges up into his body with the same fervid need that Steve drives himself down with. He’s wanted to be close to Steve for as long as he can remember, and this is far more than he knew he could ever have, so he crushes them together, fucking him hard, and relishing the contrasting rake of Steve’s blunt nails down his back and the soft, velvet way Steve kisses him.  
  
“Feels good,” Steve says, and it's like his hand is around Bucky’s spine, squeezing. “Feels so good, God, you’re gorgeous, Buck.”  
  
Bucky strains to prolong this perfect moment, reaching for Steve. He pushes his thumb into Steve's mouth and Steve bites down, just right, the feeling of it like liquid metal in Bucky’s veins. He angles his thrusts into Steve’s body so that Steve makes a sound every time Bucky drives in, so that Steve claws and fights to bring them closer. Steve comes hard all over their bellies and makes a mess of it what feels like him trying to climb into Bucky through his mouth. Overcome, Bucky can't do much else but follow him, his orgasm half startled out of him, and the fizzing rush of relief washes away everything but him and Steve.  
  
He holds Steve against him, sucking in shuddering breaths, until Steve gently pries Bucky’s fingers away and murmurs, “You’re bleeding again.”  
  
“It’ll be fine,” Bucky says, and means it. He leans his forehead against Steve’s, still dazed, and stares at Steve in awe. “God, Steve Rogers, you’re something else.”  
  
Roughly, Steve catches his face and kisses him. There’s fire in it, all Steve’s and if Bucky weren’t so damn exhausted, he knows he’d go right up in smoke again. Steve says, heart pounding under Bucky’s palm, “Wouldn't be much of nothing without you.”  


*

  
Bucky wakes to the scrape of a chair over the floorboards. It's midmorning already, from the angle of the light on the floorboards, Steve’s small window flung open to let in clean air. His ma’s sheer drapes afford them some privacy but let in the summer.  
  
“Don't move,” Steve says, from behind him, so Bucky doesn't. He curls his fingers loosely by his face, keeping his breathing slow and even, and waits, listening to the soft scratch of Steve's charcoals on the canvas he's undoubtedly holding. Bucky is sore from neck to knee, his face throbbing now that the liquor and the laudanum have worn off, so he has little desire to move.  
  
He dozes, warm in the patch of sunshine that peeks through the curtains above Steve's bed, melancholy swelling beneath his sternum. His body aches, muscles burning, but he feels loose and warm and that’s good enough for now.  
  
Steve rouses him again by climbing into the bed and kissing a line up Bucky's spine, careful, breath hot against Bucky’s skin. He digs his fingers into Bucky’s muscles, just below the shoulder blades, and Bucky groans into the pillow. Arousal stirs low around Bucky’s spine.  
  
“You look like someone took a brick to you,” Steve says, sighing into Bucky's hair. He settles his weight carefully to the side, laying himself along Bucky's body. “Is this okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky rumbles, some of the apprehension about last night's events melting away. His sides hurt, but he’ll take it just to feel the way Steve drapes over him. “That's good, Stevie.”  
  
Steve lays a hand over Bucky’s back, and Bucky can't help but think about the way Steve looked the night before, trapped between the bed and Bucky and writhing with pleasure. The thought of it alone gets Bucky going, makes him hard as a rock, and he has to shift against the mattress to get comfortable. Steve must misread his restlessness, because he asks, “You want me to go?”  
  
“What?” Bucky pushes himself up on his elbow. “You’re outta your mind if you're gonna kick yourself out of your own bedroom.”  
  
Steve looks abashed and a little guilty. “I thought you might not want me around.”  
  
Bucky gives Steve a flabbergasted look, then bowls him onto his back, pressing the length of his cock up against Steve’s belly. Steve gives a little moan, and reaches for Bucky, his hand warm and soft around Bucky’s cock. “Now, why would you think that when all this is just for you?”  
  
“Buck,” Steve says, and it's the most amazing thing ever, to know Bucky’s desire is mirrored in Steve. That this could happen more than once, that Bucky could keep Steve in his bed and bring him off until Steve is spilling breathless over his fingers. He leans in and kisses Steve, slow and sweet, and it's so good, even with the bitter ache in his ribs and his mouth and his heart.  
  
“Come on and let me have you again, Stevie,” Bucky says. He wants to get up inside Steve again, like he was last night, just to be that close again.  
  
“I don't think I can take it like that again,” Steve says, but he's smiling. “You wanna rub off on me?”  
  
And damn is it hot to hear Steve talk like that, to hear him encouraging this thing they've kindled between them. Bucky lifts Steve’s hips, sliding his briefs down – and isn't that nice, too, Steve not putting his full kit back on. Steve’s pretty cock springs out, hard and curving elegantly over his belly.  
  
“Squeeze your legs together, Stevie,” Bucky says, and slips his dick in between Steve’s thighs, right up under Steve’s balls. It’s nothing like the real thing, not like being buried up to the hilt in the volcanic squeeze of Steve’s body, but it feels good and the shivery, reflexive way Steve rocks himself down against Bucky’s body is the next best thing.  
  
Stretched out on the mattress, Steve is center focus of Bucky’s world. Bucky’s been orbiting Steve for as long as they’ve known one another, and now they’re finally colliding. All he can see is Steve: pink nipples, the flared edge of his ribcage, the dip of his navel, the wonderful little smattering of freckles over his milk-pale stomach. Bucky takes one look at him and knows he’d do damn near anything to keep Steve.  
  
“Bucky, come on,” Steve says, reaching for him.  
  
Bucky curls a hand around Steve’s cock and jerks him off slowly. Steve’s crossed legs, thrown up over one of Bucky’s broad shoulders, provide ample target for his attentions; he goes for Steve’s ankle, kissing up the slim arch of Steve’s calf, until Steve is wriggling, half laughing, half gasping in pleasure at the firm, sure tugs of Bucky’s hands.  
  
It’s amazing, and it can’t last long, Bucky can’t last long, so he doesn’t try to. It’s only a handful of moments before Steve is going off like a firecracker, coming in spurts across his own belly and chest, a hand pressed over his brow. Bucky goes with him, slicking up Steve’s thighs as he shudders to completion, feeling like he’s falling apart at all his seams.  
  
“Is it always like this?” Steve asks, breathing steadily. There's a bit of a hitch to it, but it evens out when Steve stretches out and sucks in a big breath.  
  
“What, sex?” Bucky rolls into bed next to Steve, the springs sagging under their combined weight. They fit together nicely, the top of Steve’s head tucked under Bucky’s chin, and he puts his hand over Steve’s heart like he does when Steve was bad sick. “Nah, not usually.” He pushes his face into the curve of Steve’s neck, and thinks it's never been quite like this, that he's never wanted someone as much as this. Steve’s like the air in his lungs. “Sometimes.”  
  
Steve is quiet for such a long time after that, Bucky sinks into a state of deep lassitude. His body aches, and his face won't be doing him any favors any time soon, but he's got Steve and he thinks that's good enough to make up for any of his recent misfortunes.  
  
“I ain't gonna expect you to stop seeing gals,” Steve says, with all the conviction of a man going to the gallows.  
  
“You stop that talk right now,” Bucky says, because he’s had about enough of Steve Rogers thinking he’s always gotta martyr himself. “There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding happening here.”  
  
Steve pushes himself up on his elbows, and Bucky can see the flutter of his pulse in the bare line of his throat. Bucky goes with him, reaching for a kiss like he’s done it a thousand times before, like he’s gonna do it again as often as he can.  
  
“Buck,” Steve says, breaking away. Bucky doesn't let him go far, leaning his forehead against Steve’s, keeping him close. Steve reaches up and cups Bucky’s face with both hands, holding them together ungently, and Bucky feels a rush of joy and fear. “Buck, God. I wish I’d known sooner.”  
  
“What would you have done about it?” Bucky asks. He leans into Steve. Summer has been kind to them both, but winter always crushes Steve’s lungs in its grip and work is harder for Bucky to find. He puts his hand on Steve’s chest, feeling for the thud of Steve’s heart. If they have a thousand good days like this, Bucky knows it’ll still never be enough.  
  
“Maybe kissed you a couple times, maybe asked you to dance,” Steve says, jostling Bucky. “You don't have to look so sad.”  
  
“I’m just mourning all the things I gotta give up now that I ain’t a free spirit,” Bucky lies, and he knows Steve sees right through it. He pulls Steve on top of him, kissing along Steve’s neck, biting down on the knob of his shoulder just enough to watch Steve’s pale skin redden. “Think of the state of my toes. _Christ_. What have I done?”  
  
“You’ll have to turn away all the pretty girls you could be dancing with,” Steve points out, thumping Bucky on the shoulder, and Bucky’s suddenly full to the brim with joy. Steve gets his fingers back in Bucky’s hair, rough with him, and Bucky is certain they’ll hurt each other at some point, because the way Steve looks at him makes him feel like his heart is just an open wound.  
  
“Sure,” Bucky says, the tension easing from his bones, draining away, because he can see that Steve’s in this just as deep as him. They’re all wrapped up in each other, same as always. It's written all over his face, and in the warm way his smile stretches across it. Steve squirms against him when Bucky runs both hands greedily up Steve’s narrow back. “Dancing with dames is nice, but I always did like you better.”  


*

  
It’s a real thrill to kick off his boots at the door after work and have Steve press right up against him, prying at his belt buckle with nimble fingers. He does Steve a few more times, until Steve gets too sore to take any more. Bucky has to walk with a hitch in his stride for a full day because he eggs Steve on with his tongue and his fingers and gets fucked well and good for his efforts.  
  
Half a dozen sketches of Bucky litter the apartment by the end of the week, some full of warmth, rendered airy with the watercolors Bucky treats Steve with, others dark and brooding, the line of Bucky’s charcoal brow heavier than storm clouds, his troubled mouth rendered in oxblood pastels. Steve abandons every one of them, exploring the planes of Bucky’s body with his teeth, sometimes sweet and pliant in Bucky’s arms – other times, he twists and bites like an alley cat, like Steve doesn’t know any better than to put up some kind of fight. At all times, Bucky wonders if this is what being in love is like for everyone – this terrible, wonderful feeling of being devoured from the inside out by someone – or if it's just what loving Steve feels like.  
  
Bucky counts his hours: two, ten, twenty, fifty, the sun and moon and neighborhood gossip keeping time. Steve makes him go up like kindling every moment of the day. There’s not a second of silence in his heart, nor a moment of peace from the restless greed in his bones. Bucky tries to learn how to pray again, but maybe he and God are too angry at each other for it to work, because the only thing he can think of is _Steve, Steve, Steve_. There’s a timer counting down their happiness in his head, lurking in Steve’s lungs and heart and in the threat of war. It’s a ticking bomb, and Bucky can't know the time it's keeping.  
  
Sunshine soaks their days. New York grows sluggish with the heat, the hottest part of summer turning the city inside out; the parks fill up with restless families and couples, and he and Steve take a few dollars from their coffee tin and ride down to Coney Island to spend the day getting sunburnt and tender on the boardwalk. After dark, they walk all the way down the beach, talking softly, heads bent close together, and then Steve presses Bucky up against the dark, rough rocks of the seawall and kisses him until they’re both damp with salt water. Bucky feels like a balloon about to float away.  
  
They go dancing at one of their normal dives. Steve sits and watches Bucky, hand curled around a beer bottle, and Bucky doesn't kiss any dames; he works up a good sweat half the night and begs off early, all smiles. Steve pushes Bucky’s legs apart as soon as Bucky slumps onto their little sofa and learns how to do something wonderful with his mouth that makes Bucky feel like he’s going to come right out of his skin.  
  
Steve adds another article to his collection, that death watch rattling away in the background, and Bucky makes up his mind piece by piece. Lingering in the happy glow of Steve’s company, Bucky waits almost a week to drag himself down to the recruiting office, until the bruises on his face and ribs have turned a faded rainbow of greens and golds. The image of Steve standing at the kitchen sink, elbow-deep in sudsy water, railing against Nazi propaganda is seared into his brain.  
  
He presses his mouth against Steve’s temple, inhaling the soft, sleepy smell of him, intent on slipping out before the sun is up and the city is fully awake. If he talks to Steve about his decision, he might not go, and it's a near thing when Steve rolls over, half awake, and asks muzzily, “Where’d you go?”  
  
“I’ll be back,” he promises. He puts his hand in Steve’s soft hair, kisses the crooked bridge of Steve’s nose. “I’ll always be back. Go to sleep.”  
  
Bucky takes the long way to the local recruitment office, trying to look at Brooklyn like he hasn't ever seen it before, memorizing the square rows of houses and slouching tenements, the trees in the boulevards, and the kids kicking their legs on the fire escapes.  
  
He stands outside for a long time, looking at the neat Army lettering, and when he finally works up the courage to go inside, it's fantastically underwhelming.  
  
The interior of the recruitment office is quiet, staffed by an aging officer with spectacles and a desk tag that reads _Master Sergeant_ _Edwards_ in blocky print. There’s no one else in the waiting room, but Bucky can hear a few quiet voices down the hall.  
  
Master Sergeant Edwards looks up from his paperwork, frowning at Bucky. “Can I help you?”  
  
Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’d like to enlist.”  
  
“We don't take kindly to brawling in the Army, son, if that's what you're after," Edwards says, his lined mouth bent into a deep, disapproving frown.  
  
The lie comes smoothly, "Got into a bit of a disagreement with some fascists, is all." He figures the Irish mob and guys like Frankie and Danny are close enough to it here at home anyhow, taking the opportunity for a safe life from good folks that won't fall in line.  
  
Master Sergeant Edwards fishes around in his breast pocket and takes out a pack of cigarettes. He lights one for himself and offers Bucky the other. "It's a good thing you're doing.” He takes the cigarette and the lit match that follows.  
  
There are several neat stacks of paperwork at Edwards’ elbow, overflow from the boxes and filing cabinets behind him. There’s an absolute mountain of it, for all that the office itself seems empty. The American war machine hasn't yet chugged up to full steam ahead, but there seem to be plenty of down-on-their-luck fellas willing to train up to shoot other fellas who disagree with Uncle Sam.  
  
“Where do I need to sign?” Bucky asks. He’s pretty sure he can survive damn near anything, as long as he’s got Steve to come home to.  
  
“You literate, son?” Edwards asks. “I can get one of our volunteer gals to read and scribe for you, if not.”  
  
“Yeah, came up in St. Barbara’s until I was seventeen,” Bucky says, and takes the slim packet of papers. “My ma made sure I could read. Got an education in figures, too.”  
  
“You fill out your information now, and I’ll get you registered to take your AGCT and we’ll go from there,” Edwards says, and that seems to be the end of the fanfare. Edwards passes across a clipboard and a pen.  
  
“That's it?” Bucky asks. “Don't seem so bad.”  
  
Edwards frowns over the rim his glasses, his eyebrows heavily involved in the process. “Ain't getting in that’s the painful part, it's the getting out.”  
  
“But ain't that the truth of life,” Bucky says. His hands don't tremble when he signs his name.


End file.
